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Facial recognition technology is improving by leaps and bounds. Some commercial software can now tell the gender of a person in a photograph. When the person in the photo is a white man, the software is right 99 percent of the time. But the darker the skin, the more errors arise — up to nearly 35 percent for images of darker skinned women, according to a new study that breaks fresh ground by measuring how the technology works on people of different races and gender. These disparate results, calculated by Joy Buolamwini, a researcher at the M.I.T. Media Lab, show...

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson reported Tuesday on patents filed by Google that purport to show a bizarre plan to spy on you and parent your children. “In another patent application from September 2016, Google imagines how it could take control of your parenting, your relationship with your children,” Carlson explained. “Google’s smart home system could detect children near a liquor cabinet for example, or in their parents bedroom, infer that ‘mischief is occurring’ and deliver a verbal warning.” The Daily Caller co-founder said, “In another example, Google imagines a hypothetical child called Benjamin. Google’s cameras would be watching Benjamin at...

Just a month after her rocky White House exit, former Trump aide Omarosa Manigault Newman will be joining the cast of CBS’ debut season of “Celebrity Big Brother,” the network announced Sunday. Omarosa resigned from the Trump administration in December. Now it looks like she's going from the White House to the “Big Brother” house.

ICE has struck a deal to track license plates across the US https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/26/16932350/ice-immigration-customs-license-plate-recognition-contract-vigilant-solutions Exclusive: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US By Russell Brandom@russellbrandom  Jan 26, 2018, 8:04am EST SHAREMORE The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, according to a contract finalized earlier this month. The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking, raising significant concerns from civil libertarians. The source of the data is not named in the contract, but an ICE representative said the...

PowerPost Follow @powerpost PowerPost Analysis The Health 202: NIH wants 1 million Americans to contribute to new pool of gene data By Paige Winfield Cunningham January 16 THE PROGNOSIS Starting this spring, Americans across the country will be invited to contribute to a massive new pool of genomic information being assembled by the government, a project that represents the most ambitious effort yet to capitalize on the promising new frontier of gene-based medicine. Three years after the National Institutes of Health first announced its Precision Medicine Initiative — subsequently redubbed “All of Us” — the agency’s director, Francis Collins, says...

This move also relocates Chinese customers' iCloud data from the US to China.... Per a clause in the terms and conditions,.... Apple and GCBD "will have access to all data that you store on this service, including the right to share, exchange and disclose all user data, including content, to and between each other under applicable law." China passed a controversial cybersecurity law last July that required companies that operated data centers in China to store all data in the country.

Coca-Cola will sell smaller bottles at higher prices in response to the sugar tax. The soft drinks manufacturer has refused to alter its famous sugar-laden recipe. But from March the cost of some bottles of the fizzy drink will rise by more than 10 per cent – before the new tax takes effect the following month. The plans mean that a 1.75 litre bottle of Coke will shrink to 1.5 litres, while increasing in price by 20p to £1.99. The cost of a 500ml bottle will also rise from £1.09 to £1.25 – increasing by 25 per cent from just...

On his first day of kindergarten, my son came home and told me that his classmates should be punished because all they did was run around and play instead of listen to the teacher. As he grew up, he played basketball at the Jewish Community Center, was a farmer in the musical “Oklahoma!” and celebrated his Bar Mitzvah at age 13. In the summer, he can be found at a grill, making hot dogs and hamburgers for kids in the neighborhood. But my son is a teenager and he is black. So he must be in a gang. At least...

Baker possesses 47 hard disks containing data on a massive surveillance operation overseen by John Brennan and James Clapper which allegedly spied on Trump Tower and now-President Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower. “I provided to the FBI seventeen businesses of Donald Trump, including the Trump Tower, the Trump leasing programs, all of these different programs, and including Trump himself and the various family members that had been wiretapped under these programs,” (Dennis) Montgomery said in the interview. “There has been a wiretap on Trump for years.” Montgomery provided the proof of the surveillance program to Judge Royce Lamberth in...

Twitter is cracking down on hate speech and not just by looking at its own site. In what amounts to a major shift in Twitter policy, the company announced on Friday that it will be monitoring user's behavior "on and off the platform" and will suspend a user's account if they affiliate with violent organizations, according to an update to Twitter's Help Center on Friday. "You also may not affiliate with organizations that — whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform — use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes," the update...

For all of his success as a prosecutor, state legislator and congressman, it might have been his experience with a Black kid from Inglewood that has shaped Schiff most. In his mid-20s, fresh out of law school, he volunteered to become a “big brother” through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles. He was paired with David McMillan, a child of a single mother who needed a male role model for her son. The two hit it off immediately, bonding over “The Big Lebowski,” Billy Joel and the beach. Three decades later, they are still part of each other’s...

Twitter vowed to crack down further on hate speech and sexual harassment, days after CEO Jack Dorsey said in a tweet-storm that the company was "still" not doing enough to protect its users. The policy changes were specifically aimed at protecting women who unknowingly or unwillingly had nude pictures of themselves distributed online or were subject to unwanted sexual advances. They would also aim to shield groups subject to hateful imagery, symbols and threats of violence.

"BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." This slogan appeared on posters of the Party leader in the dystopian society of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was a constant reminder of omnipresent government surveillance for “thoughtcrime” – independent thinking. In Orwell’s book, Ministry of Truth ‘history re-writer’ Winston Smith quietly rebelled against this oppression, starting a diary expressing forbidden thoughts. But government telescreens were everywhere. Watched constantly, Smith’s every move was monitored. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the consequences of being caught were dire; the stress on individuals enormous. As head of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), I have been feeling a...

These cameras do automatically start recording when an officer opens the door of their patrol vehicle. A blue tooth signal burst gets sent out and makes the camera start recording. The burst can also affect any phones within a 10 to 15 foot area.

"if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." Just two or three generations ago, most Americans understood that George Orwell’s classics Animal Farm and 1984 were written to explain how freedom is lost to totalitarianism and the intolerance that accompanies it. Big Brother, a term that many people still casually use to describe an all-knowing governing authority, comes right out of 1984. In the society that Orwell describes, all citizens are continually reminded that “Big Brother is watching you,” by way of a constant surveillance through the pervasive...

Parents of students at a New Jersey high school were ordered to get their children’s blood and urine tested after a can of beer was discovered at a football game. The can of beer reportedly landed on the ground and was spotted by a school official during a game at Randolph High School on Friday night.

USA Today is touting a report out this morning that “ID’ed 4500 Trump golf-club members through” their social media accounts as well as an online service that lets golfers track their handicaps: Do they not see how awful this looks?

Back in January, Food and Wine reported that KFC China would be introducing a facial recognition system that would predict your order (it’s not as creepy as it sounds). Now it looks like the brand is enhancing that technology with additional features. According to Reuters, the system lets customers pay by face, just by approaching one of the store's newly unveiled monitors. The new device is located at a KFC outpost in the city of Hangzhou. The facial recognition system is called Smile to Pay, and it’s being featured at a Yum Brands (the company behind KFC) so-called concept store...

Just in case your sensibilities haven’t been offended enough, the FBI wants you to know that your interest in Hillary Clinton’s emails is less important than protecting her privacy. Therefore, the FBI says it will not be releasing any more information on the subject. In effect, the FBI is telling you to go to hell and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. In March 2016, Ty Clevenger, a New York City lawyer sought government correspondence on the subject of Clinton’s emails under the Freedom of Information Act. Earlier this month, the head of the FBI’s Records...

How Google's Jigsaw is fighting the darkest parts of the internet BY KERRY FLYNN JUL 20, 2017 Fake news, terrorist propaganda, hateful comments — the internet is not the nicest place in the world. Jigsaw is trying to change that. Formerly under Google, Jigsaw now is a subsidiary within Alphabet. The company, under the direction of Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas founder Jared Cohen who serves as founder and CEO of Jigsaw, focuses on researching some of the darkest corners of the internet and implementing ways to address them. Yasmin Green, director of research and development at Jigsaw,...